Documentation

View Scripts

Once your controller has assigned variables and called render(),
Zend_View then includes the requested view script and executes
it "inside" the scope of the Zend_View instance. Therefore,
in your view scripts, references to $this actually point to the
Zend_View instance itself.

Variables assigned to the view from the controller are referred
to as instance properties. For example, if the controller were
to assign a variable 'something', you would refer to it as
$this->something in the view script. (This allows you to keep
track of which values were assigned to the script, and which are
internal to the script itself.)

By way of reminder, here is the example view script from the
Zend_View introduction.

Escaping Output

One of the most important tasks to perform in a view script
is to make sure that output is escaped properly; among other
things, this helps to avoid cross-site scripting attacks.
Unless you are using a function, method, or helper that does
escaping on its own, you should always escape variables when
you output them.

Zend_View comes with a method called escape() that does such
escaping for you.

By default, the escape() method uses the PHP htmlspecialchars()
function for escaping. However, depending on your environment,
you may wish for escaping to occur in a different way. Use the
setEscape() method at the controller level to tell Zend_View
what escaping callback to use.

The callback function or method should take the value to be
escaped as its first parameter, and all other parameters should
be optional.

Using Alternate Template Systems

Although PHP is itself a powerful template system, many developers
feel it is too powerful or complex for their template designers and
will want to use an alternate template engine. Zend_View provides
two mechanisms for doing so, the first through view scripts, the
second by implementing Zend_View_Interface.

Template Systems Using View Scripts

A view script may be used to instantiate and manipulate a
separate template object, such as a PHPLIB-style template. The
view script for that kind of activity might look something like
this: